Canada d o e s have a social democratic party, decidedly so. It is called the New Democratic Party (in Quebec Nouveau Parti Démocratique, though admittedly it hardly exists there).

I think you are exaggerating. The NDP is no fringe party like cannabis and yoga parties, but a movement with deep historical roots, right back to the 1890s.

Its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth
Federation, elected the first Socialist head of government in North America (in Saskatchewan, in the late 1940s) and it has a strong provincial base, having at various times, including in the 1980s and 1990s, formed governments in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatcewan.

It is true that the party declined in recent years; at its peak, in the 1980s, it elected about 40 MPs out of the 300 in Canada's House of Representatives, based on about 10% of the vote. It also held the balance of power when Conservatives and Liberals were balanced.Now it has only 13 MPs. But that is mainly due to the capacity of the Liberals to steal the NDP's clothes, to the regional, majoritarian single-party constituency system which distorts the proportion btween votes cast and seats gained, and to temporary factors such as the rise of the far right in the recent 2000 elections, which sent frightened NDP voters to vote for the Liberals.

Please do remember that the Conservatives have also been once almost wiped out, in the 1990s, after the rule of Brian Mulroney, and yet managed to stage a comeback. Since the NDP's voting base in the popular vote has changed little, I expect them to do the same, some time.

However, be that as it may - the NDP are certainly not a lunatic fringe party as you sem to have presented them. Do note that under North American conditions it is extremely difficult to survive as a socialist party - the American Socialist received 10% of the vote at their peak in the 1930 and, surprise, there is (1)one
Socialist member in the House of Representatives.

When in a flexible, developed capitalist system a left-of-centre capitalist party like the Democrats in America or the Liberals in canada is ready o represent some of the interests of organised labour and the lower classes, keeping aviable explicitly socialist party is very difficult and, with a sustained 10% share of the vote, quite an achievement.

I know you are an adherent of liberal capitalism, but if you try to assess this achievement in purely idelogy-free political science terms, you will have to acknowledge it.

Some complementary remarks on Italy are due.
I don't think it is possible tosay that Italy "was in the hands" of a scoialist, or even a left party, and
certainly not "for a long time"

The unique feature of post-1943 Italy, i.e., since the fall of Fascism and the creation of a fully-fledged electoral democracy, was the dominance of a Communist party as the main force on the Left, with only a weak Socialist and an even weaker Social Democratic parties competing with it, a n d as trong leftish faction in the ruling and ideologically blurred Christian Democratic party, which controlled a part of the trade unions.

Fear of a Communist takeover polarised Italian society and prevented a regular, "normal" electoral pendulum swing between democratic left and right wing parties

That was the structural reason for endemic corruption in Italy.

The party which ruled incessantly and in changing coalitions for almost half a century was the Christian Democrats, and it was the main party of the Left, the Communists, which was permanently excluded.
Only the end of the Cold War permitted a realignemnt in which the Socialist party PSI, having been completely corrupted after years of supplying the crucialo 10% for a coalition with the Christian Democrats, has been totally wiped out. And it was the erstwhile ruling party, the Christian Democrats, which was wiped out , with left-, centre- and right-wing factions drifting in different directions. Only the reinvention of the old Communist party as a Democratic Party of the Left allowed it to compete for power and win it, but only very briefly, in a n electoral alliancce with former Christian Democrats (like Romano Prodi) and without achieving anything.

So Italy is in many senses unique, perhaps even "more unique than others".

Thank you for this information.
Apparently, our assessments are not that far apart. The duplication of information about which you complained resulted from me writing my response to your first intervention, before the second, more detailed one.
As for the historical roots: That, of course, was a didactic simplification. The CCF has indeed been founded in 1933, but it developed from the Independent Labor Party founded in 1919, which itself developed from trade unionists organising from the 1890s and socialist intellectuals such as James Woodsworth active from the early 20th century. It is in this sense that I meant the historical roots are to be found in the 1890s. Woodsworth himself, by the way, was the personal link between ILP and CCF (whose president he became from 1933), and he himself had been an active socialist agitator from about 1910.

As for right wing gains in the 2000 election, what I was referring to the Canada Alliance party, which may be fairly called, at least, far right. As far as I recall, the swing from the NDP to the Liberals in this election has been widely attributed to fear of the Canada Alliance driving NDP voters - in a first-past-the-post majoritarian electoral system - into the Liberal column. That paradoxically led to Liberal victory and the NDP's collapse at the polls.

Thanks for the information on the change in the regional voting base - I was not aware of that before. It does stand to resaon that the depressed Atlantic provinces would vote NDP - a new development, as you have rightly pointed. The question is whether it could retain this ote and regain its former support base among unionised and public sector workers in the populous, industrial inland pprovinces - Ontario and Manitoba. I believe this is not a long shot - they did it before, and one economic downturn w, or ahigh profile labour dispute, or a privatising attack on the public sector welfare srvices, will suffice to create this effect .
It happened before, after all.

Chasing Progress: Beyond measuring economic growth.